by Sarah Gerard
Seth is an idiot. Please forgive yourself.
I’m trying.
You’re doing the best you can.
Aaron can name every moon of Jupiter. He can pick up any instrument and play it by ear; he has perfect pitch. He sent me a song he recorded before leaving Los Angeles, in which he accompanies himself in four-part harmony. It’s named after his favorite line from Rain Man. I listen to it on repeat. His voice is alto and clear like Sam Cooke’s. I memorize all of his lyrics. “I worked the lyrics over for weeks,” he told me. They’re full of clever lines and tell a twee love story. They’re addressed to Amanda as he leaves the West Coast, before she breaks up with him two weeks later. Amanda is an actress ten years Aaron’s senior. Just after he left Los Angeles, she traveled to upstate New York to shoot a movie. It was directed by the Duplass brothers, Aaron’s favorite. Aaron drove up to see her and to help with the movie.
She dumped me standing in the doorway of her cabin, he said. Then we fucked in her period blood on the wood floor. It was splattering everywhere, all over us. All over the rug. She was so angry. I think she hated me.
Did you hate her? I said.
A little.
“I LOVED MOVIES when I was a kid,” he tells me. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the moon has risen high over the Chrysler Building. I’ve stolen a rolling chair from the next cubicle over, and we’ve set our laptops side by side on Karen’s desk. We sip cups of Keurig from the employee kitchen. We’re lit by the glow of our screens. We’ve spent ten minutes writing and sixty talking. The story Aaron is telling me now is from the fifth grade. “I had plans to see Rushmore with my friends. Then the day before, they told me they weren’t going.” He unwraps a chocolate. He balls up the tinfoil and flicks it into the trash can. “Bill Murray was my favorite actor, so my mom and I went instead. Then we saw my friends at the theater,” he says. He eats the chocolate.
“That’s shitty,” I say.
“The next day, they told me they didn’t want to be my friends anymore. They said I was annoying.”
I suggest including this as a subplot of True Love. I think I am being supportive, but he says, “I hated my childhood. It wasn’t fun for me. I found it frustrating. I couldn’t do anything.” I’m taking notes as he talks, but he rests his hand on mine. I close my laptop, shrouding his face in darkness.
“You’re not annoying,” I say.
“You’re sweet.”
I touch a scar at the corner of his eye.
“What’s this from?” I say. I trace it gently.
His lips part. He holds my gaze, and I feel his fingers wrap around my wrist. It sends a tremor up my arm. His other hand pulls my sleeve back, exposing a scar I gave myself in tenth grade.
“What’s this from?” he says.
Our faces are inches apart. I smell his breath and close the distance between us. Our chairs roll together. His hand cups the back of my neck, and I climb into his lap, straddling him. My fingers lace through his hair. His other hand travels up my thigh and under my skirt.
“Come with me,” I say.
But we stay there. I lean into him, grinding. He pushes my underwear to the side. I stand and drop them to the floor, sitting on Karen’s desk, lifting my knees up to show him my pussy. He fingers me and I ejaculate on Karen’s carpet. My cum lands in the shape of a heart. We laugh. I remember then that there’s a camera in the ceiling. “Shit,” I say.
I lead him to the bathroom. I wave at the motion detector and the lights come on with the fan. My body is sweating. The door swings closed behind us, and Aaron turns me and pushes me against the tile wall. It’s cold against my skin. Aaron pulls my skirt above my waist.
“I love you, Nina,” he says, his hand on my breast. “I’m in love with you and I think Seth doesn’t deserve you.”
“I love you, too, Aaron.”
I climb onto the sink. I look over my shoulder and watch him in the mirror as he fucks me. I see that Aaron and I could be twins. The simple beauty of him is exhilarating. He is already close and familiar.
Ten
“I’m not comfortable with you sleeping with Aaron,” says my mother. I’m hiking back to the office with a box of the thriller writer’s books, which I’ve just picked up from the Century, near Bryant Park. It’s 95 degrees in the Grand Central District, and heat waves warp the sidewalk as bodies of strangers press in, close and sticky. I pause at a trash can and rest the box on it. Sharp sweetness mixes with something rotting. A homeless man is soliciting a group of tourists for change. They back away.
“I’m not sleeping with him,” I say. I’ve communicated with my mother on a weekly basis since leaving Florida. Sometimes our exchanges are brief—cat memes, food photos—but often there are conversations requiring thirty minutes to an hour. While we talk, she browses the racks at Nordstrom’s, or lays mulch for her special friend, or cleans her special friend’s house, or is driving from St. Petersburg to Kissimmee because her polycule has asked her to dog-sit for them. I tell myself I’m grateful for these conversations because I love my mother and my mother needs me.
“Please explain why it’s necessary,” she says.
“It’s not. I’m just expressing a feeling. I said that I wanted to.”
“I think you want it for the wrong reasons. I don’t think you know why you want what you want.”
“What do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want because Dara will never give me what I want.”
“Then find someone who can. Or be with yourself. What’s so bad about being alone?”
“I love her. I just don’t trust her family. They’re not good people. Her mom is white trash, a miserable bitch. Her sister’s husband is a drug dealer, and none of them respect Dara’s boundaries, they all have keys to her house, they come in all the time and trash the place, and guess who cleans up after them because Dara lives like a hobo?”
“Are you sleeping together?”
“I don’t like the way she touches me. I tell her how I want to be touched and how I don’t want to be touched, and then she does the thing I told her not to do. Also, she smells and she’s gained weight. She told me how she and her ex used to have sex, so now I have that mental picture. I’m sleeping in the bed upstairs.”
“I didn’t realize you were living with her.”
“I have my own place, but she doesn’t know about it.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“Not until I’m done furnishing it.”
“So you’re breaking up with her?” I prop the box on my hip and carry it farther down the block. “Mom, this sounds like a really dishonest way to go about things.” I reach the thriller writer’s building, and its cold air punches me in the face. I squeeze through the vestibule, nodding at the doorman, and wait for the elevator with the box resting at my feet, sweat soaking my shirt’s thin weave.
“Yeah, but if I tell her about it, then she’ll convince me to stay,” says my mother.
“Do you want to stay?”
The door opens. I step inside, sliding the box with my foot. I hit the tenth-floor button, but the button doesn’t light up, so I wave my key card in front of the sensor and mash it again.
“I told you, I love her,” my mom says.
“It sounds like you hate her.”
The elevator stops on the third floor.
“She wants me to live with her. She wants to take care of me. She basically asks me to work fewer hours so that she can take me on lavish vacations, then she transfers money into my bank account to keep me dependent on her. I tell her not to, but she does it anyway.”
“Sounds kind of nice.”
The doors open, and a security guard steps inside, holding an empty sandwich bag. He smiles at me and checks the buttons. He mashes the door-close button and the doors close.
“I’ll be in St. Petersburg next weekend getting boxes from your nana’s storage unit. I had to talk to your father.”
“Did he say anything about Butters?
” It’s been over a month, and I suddenly realize I haven’t checked on her.
The elevator stops at the sixth floor and the doors open. No one is there. The security guard presses the door-close button and the doors close again.
“What do you mean?” says my mother.
“She was sick when I left.”
“Yeah.”
“What did the vet say?”
We reach the tenth floor and the doors open. Standing before us are the thriller writer, another security guard, and a middle-aged woman in tweed, displaying my panties on the eraser end of a pencil.
“Baby, Butters is dead.”
THERE’S AN INVESTIGATION into who trespassed into Karen’s cubicle. She relinquishes her last piece of evidence, my panties, to the security guard’s bag as I eavesdrop from the kitchen. I overhear him say he’ll review the closed-circuit footage from the previous night. “I’ll be honest, ma’am. It was probably a sex worker.”
Before he leaves, he circulates the floor and asks the rest of us to report any suspicious activity, anyone we’ve noticed who doesn’t seem to belong.
I stay for an hour after everyone leaves. My plan was to write, but instead I apply for ten jobs I won’t get. I find most of them on the NYFA website. I debate making another Keurig, but I decide it would be better to go home instead and spend time with Seth. He’s been upset since his hours at Dick Blick were cut in half a week ago, for unstated reasons. I figure it’s either his petty shoplifting of art supplies or his difficult personality. It’s obvious when he dislikes someone, and he sulks when he doesn’t feel like doing something.
I put my laptop in its slipcase and zip my backpack. I take my phone out of the front pocket and see that Brian has texted me. It’s been weeks since our last conversation. Did you tell anyone about us? the message says.
I stare at it. I’ve continued writing him letters but stopped mailing them. The silence of the office spreads around me, and the light above my desk shines directly down on my head. I feel Seth’s location almost an hour away like a rope pulled taut. There’s no question of not answering. I should do so now, while I’m still alone.
No, I say. Why?
I hold my phone in my lap and stare into the weave of my cubicle wall.
Erin says everyone knows, he says. Claudette told her.
Claudette wouldn’t, I say, but I don’t know that. My friendship with Claudette, while close, is an outgrowth of my relationship with Seth via Jared. Should there be a conflict of interest, I have no doubt Seth will take precedence over me. Along with Seth will go all of my friends, my plans for the future, my residence, the money I’ve invested in our new living arrangement. What did you say to Erin?
Nothing. That she was lying, he says.
I take out my laptop and open it on the desk. I message Erin on Facebook to ask if she’s spoken about me with Claudette recently, and include my phone number. I close my laptop. My hands shake as I call Claudette.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.
“There’s nothing to know.”
“Okay.”
“Erin is just jealous because Brian called me for comfort when he found out she was fucking his best friend.”
“Why did he call you, of all people?”
“Erin’s calling me,” I say. “I’ll call you back.”
“Well, aren’t you?” says Erin.
“No,” I say. I leave my body as I speak. I don’t know what I say. I force my tone to remain calm. I try to use big words because I doubt she’ll understand them. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t perpetuate this rumor,” I say.
“I saw the video, Nina.”
“What video?”
She laughs. I wait. “You don’t know about this?” she says.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I run my hands over the surface of my memory. They come back clean.
“There are dozens of them, not just you,” she says. “There’s one of a girl who looks like she could be fifteen. I found them on his computer and then on a kink website in his browser history.”
I stare at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window behind my cube. The lights of the office across the street obscure my eyes. “Whatever you saw wasn’t me.”
“It was definitely you.”
“What website?”
“It doesn’t matter. The internet is forever.”
“It wasn’t me,” I say. “You’re wrong, and I don’t want you talking to anyone else about this.”
“At least you’re not the only one,” she says. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell your boyfriend.”
SETH HAS BORROWED my copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth. He’s been reading it for the last three days that he hasn’t been working, and he’s reading it now on our bed, in his underwear, the same pair he wore yesterday. So far, he’s made no mention of looking for a way to supplement his halved income. It doesn’t seem to concern him that he won’t make his part of the rent this month. Nor has he told Rafael. “It doesn’t concern him,” he says.
“Hey,” I say, casually exhausted. I drop my bag in the doorway. He doesn’t look up. “How was your day?”
He nods. His indifference tells me he doesn’t know what happened. On the subway, I deleted every message I have ever exchanged with Brian: Facebook, Gchat, Twitter, Instagram. My eyes travel nonchalantly over to the wooden box of notebooks where I’ve hidden the bundle of unsent letters. It appears undisturbed.
“I have to go to the bathroom and then there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Do you,” he says.
I float to the bathroom. I sit on the closed lid of the toilet and press my hands together over my mouth. I breathe in the warm air of my own breath and press my knuckles into my eyelids and feel totally out of control. I stare into the grout. I notice a half-smoked bowl on the edge of the bathtub, hit it three times, and let the numb settle in. The white noise mutes, and I lift the toilet lid and empty my intestines into the bowl. They’re liquid.
Back in the bedroom, I feel lighter. I assume my position on the bed. Seth isn’t even halfway through the novel, and it crosses my mind that he may have an undiagnosed learning disability. Or perhaps he’s on the spectrum. Or maybe it’s simply a function of being a two-dimensional artist: that, as in a painting, his thoughts move laterally across a plane rather than progressing linearly, one after the other. In the yellow light, I’m able to find it endearing, fascinating even.
I say calmly, “There’s a rumor that Brian and I are sleeping together. Whatever you hear, it isn’t true. Erin made it up because she’s jealous. Brian and I are friends.”
I await his reaction. He looks at a spot just above my eyes.
“I told you the other day, Brian and Erin have been talking again lately. It turns out she’s been sleeping with Jasper. This is their drama, not mine.”
He closes the book and sets it gently between us. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Nina.”
I show him I’m listening.
“I know you read into things. Historically, you tend to make impulsive decisions based upon your immediate desires.”
Don’t speak, I think. Don’t say anything.
“You don’t consider the consequences.”
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“Listen. I know I’ve pushed you away. I’ve held you responsible for my own fear-based projections. However—”
“Are you about to say that you believe this disgusting rumor?”
“If the rumor is true, it’s my own fault for enabling you, for failing to take control of my life.”
“Enabling me in what way? What are you talking about? You’re contradicting yourself.”
“Please don’t get defensive.”
“I’m not getting defensive, Seth. I’m genuinely confused.”
“You’re a conveniently confused girl. You have male baggage and a unique perspective on the world that only favors yourself.”
“I mean, everyone is the center of their own universe,” I say, pretending to laugh. “What do you mean, ‘male baggage’?”
“I know you.”
“Debatable.” My mind is white. “Brian and I are friends.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re great friends. And if the rumor is true, I’m pretty powerless to do anything about it.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“You decide you want something, and it might as well be chiseled in marble.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You don’t like to be criticized. You don’t like to be told you’re wrong.”
“Stop telling me who I am.”
“You would be happier without someone around to show you the consequences of your actions. You can’t stand to feel guilty about your consistently selfish choices.”
“Stop telling me who I am.”
“I wish you had a better understanding of what a relationship means for me. You know I lost my father and my mother quickly moved on. I have had a complicated life.”
“I do understand what a relationship means for you. I haven’t done anything to compromise that.”
“Even if you had, you would feel no obligation to tell me about it. It’s not in your nature. You think only of yourself.”
I grab a pair of scissors from the jar on the nightstand. They’re brand-new and extremely sharp. I dig an open point into the flesh of my wrist and drag it toward my elbow, looking Seth in the eye. It makes a white ditch that quickly fills with blood.
“Stop. Telling me. Who. I am,” I say.
THE GASH THROBS. It throbs as I see a man beating his meat on the sidewalk. It throbs as I walk several blocks away from the thriller writer’s office to pick up his lunch. I wear long sleeves to conceal the wound even though it’s 98 degrees outside and my shirt presses hot exhaust into my skin. Everyone on line at the Chop’t on Lexington is wearing black. I hand the thriller writer his roughage, and it throbs as he compares the receipt against his change. He asks me for loyalty when I say that I’m quitting, but I tell him I need more money. “I thought your parents were helping you,” he says. It throbs as I turn away.